Career

Began singing back-up vocals with No Doubt, 1986; became lead singer, c.
1988; band signed with Interscope Records, 1991, and released first LP,
No Doubt,
1992; introduced own clothing line, L.A. M.B., 2004; released solo
record,
Love. Angel. Music. Baby.,
2004; made film debut in
The Aviator,
2004.

Awards:
Grammy Award for best rap/sung collaboration (with Eve), Recording
Academy, for "Let Me Blow Ya Mind," 2001; Grammy Award for
best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal (with No Doubt),
Recording Academy, for "Hey Baby," 2002; Grammy Award for
best pop performance by a duo or group with vocal (with No Doubt),
Recording Academy, for Underneath It All, 2003.

Sidelights

After spending nearly all of her adult life as frontwoman for the ska-pop
band No Doubt, Gwen Stefani emerged with her first solo release,

Gwen Stefani

Love. Angel. Music. Baby.,
in 2004. A rock-star fashion trendsetter since No Doubt released its
multiplatinum-selling
Tragic Kingdom
in the mid-1990s, the energetic singer/songwriter also launched her own
line of clothing in 2004 under the "L.A.M.B." label, and
even made her film debut later that year as 1930s screen siren Jean Harlow
in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic,
The Aviator.
"In one of those unpredictable pop transformations, Stefani
started the 21st century as the squeaky-voiced wacko from No
Doubt," wrote Caroline Sullivan of London's
Guardian
newspaper, "but enters 2004 a hard-currency
'celebrity' whom fashion designers seat in the front row of
their shows. More mysteriously, she has achieved this without losing a
corresponding amount of musical credibility."

Born in 1969, Stefani is a product of the Southern California world later
made famous in the hit teen-drama series on FOX,
The O.C.
Yet unlike the fictional teens in the more upscale oceanside Newport
Beach community, Stefani grew up in sprawling Anaheim, the city that is
also home to Disneyland. Her father, Dennis, worked in marketing for
Japanese motorcycle-maker Yamaha, while her mother, Patricia, was a
stay-at-home mom to Stefani, her sister, Jill, and a pair of brothers. Pat
Stefani was a talented seamstress who made her children elaborate
Halloween costumes, and Stefani took up the
hobby as well by the time she reached Loara High School. "I
couldn't stand to have the same thing as everyone else," she
told
WWD
's Karen Parr. "I always made my own clothes—and had
many disasters."

In 1986, the year she turned 17, Stefani was recruited to sing back-up for
an eight-member ska band her older brother, Eric, had started with a
friend from his Dairy Queen job, John Spence. The band, which settled on
the name No Doubt after the charismatic Spence's favorite phrase,
played their first show in January of 1987 at Fender's, a Long
Beach venue. Over the next several months, the group quickly gained an
ardent following, with Spence's on-stage backflips a particular
crowd favorite, and were booked for a gig at the Roxy, a top Los Angeles
showcase, for late December. Stefani, her brother, and the other band
members were devastated when Stefani shot himself in an Anaheim parking
lot four days before Christmas of 1987.

Stefani and the rest of the band nearly called it quits, but decided to
soldier on without the beloved singer and showman. By then Stefani was
dating Tony Kanal, No Doubt's bassist, and their relationship would
last eight years. After several changes in lineup, the final roster was
Stefani, who took over the lead vocals, guitarist Tom Dumont, drummer
Adrian Young, and Stefani's brother, Eric, who was the
band's keyboard player. Though she was the frontperson for the
still-popular Southern California act, Stefani was shy and remained
somewhat in the background when they were not playing live. "At
first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what
everyone told me," she told
Newsweek
's Lorraine Ali. "I was completely passive, no goals. I was
in love with Tony and just happy to be in the band."

In 1991, No Doubt signed with Interscope, and their self-titled debut came
out the following year. Sales were lackluster, and by 1994
Stefani's brother had quit to take a job as an animator for
The Simpsons.
Around the same time, Kanal broke it off with Stefani, and she was
devastated. At the time, they were working on songs for a follow-up, and
Stefani began writing some lyrics herself. The result was
"Don't Speak," which would become the band's
breakout single and exposed to the world her feelings about the split with
Kanal. "I told the story of us, not ever knowing 16 million people
would hear it," she recalled in another interview with Ali for
Newsweek
in 2001. "Then the record just blew up. Now we regret being so
open about it 'cause it was so painful. Imagine every day sitting
in interviews talking about it, and we still do."

"Don't Speak" and another hit song, "Just a
Girl," appeared on
Tragic Kingdom,
which was released in October of 1995. The band was still with
Interscope, but the label had so little faith in their future by that
point that the record was farmed it out to one of Interscope's
subsidiaries, Trauma. But the record was a huge hit, and went on to a
nine-week run in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart; it would
eventually sell 15 million copies worldwide.
Entertainment Weekly
's music critic David Browne called it "a virtual Cuisinart
of the last two decades of pop: a hefty chunk of new-wave party bounce and
Chili Peppers-style white-boy funk, with dashes of reggae, squealing
hair-metal guitar, disco, ska-band horns, and Pat Benatar, whom Stefani
occasionally resembles vocally . Rarely have a band called alternative
sounded like such savvy, lounge-bred pros."

Stefani's energetic stage presence, platinum-blond hair, and
trademark siren-red lipstick made her a distinctive presence that quickly
propelled the band toward stardom. Her eye-catching outfits, which ran to
zippered punk-rock-style trousers and plaid during these early years, were
widely copied by female fans. The success that had come out of heartbreak
also opened other doors for Stefani: during a touring spell that went on
for more than two years, she met Gavin Rossdale, lead singer for the
British grunge band Bush, which was huge at the time. The two began
dating, though the relationship was a long-distance one for several years.

In early 1998, No Doubt stopped touring in order to settle in and come up
with a new record. That process would take two long years, and Stefani
once again penned some personal lyrics that brought the band another hit.
In this case, "Ex-Girlfriend" highlighted some of the
problems she had with Rossdale, with its first line, "I kinda
always knew I'd end up your ex-girlfriend." The track
appeared on
Return of Saturn,
released in 2000, which also featured "Marry Me" and
"Simple Kind of Life," in both of which Stefani seemed to be
confessing a desire to settle down and become a wife and mother. It was a
far more reflective album, less ska in feel than their earlier music.
Browne, the
Entertainment Weekly
critic, called its "smoother, layered mid-tempo ballads as
creamily textured as extra-thick napoleon pastries." Yet once
again, the music journalist gave it a mixed review, in particular finding
that some of "Stefani's lyrics incessantly circle around the
same theme: terminal insecurity and docility."

Stefani dismissed the lovestruck-co-dependent tag that some felt came
through too strongly in songs like "Marry Me." The
sentiments expressed were
not a sign that she was nearing 30 and ready to get married, as she told
Entertainment Weekly
writer Chris Willman. "I have to clarify this, because everybody
gets it wrong," she said. "It's more about how I used
to think that's all I ever wanted, and the confusion of realizing
that I am more faithful to my freedom than I ever thought I could be. And
that's scary."

Stefani and her bandmates emerged from the recording studio more quickly
for their next effort, which was 2001's
Rock Steady.
To help out, a roster of producers and collaborators joined in, among
them funk and pop legend Prince, British techno producer William Orbit,
and reggae stars Sly & Robbie. Stefani also did a pair of side
projects, with rapper Eve in "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" and
"South Side" with Moby, which garnered serious radio
airplay. But once again, the biggest single for No Doubt was another
dissection of Stefani's love life, in this case "Underneath
It All." It was also the album's sleeper hit, reaching the
No. 1 spot in 2002 on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart. The song also
netted the group their second Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a
Duo or Group with Vocal (the first was for "Hey Baby" the
previous year).

Stefani, by then, had married Rossdale in a lavish Anglican service in
London in September of 2002, for which she wore pink and white silk faille
gown created for her by one of her favorite designers, John Galliano of
Dior. There was also a second ceremony, a Roman Catholic one, held in
California two weeks later. Taking a hiatus from the music business, the
new bride ventured into a related career: as designer for her own clothing
line, which she called "L.A.M.B." The acronym stood for
"Love. Angel. Music. Baby." and was introduced in 2003 with
a line of purses Stefani designed for LeSportsac. A full line of clothing
and accessories hit department stores in the spring of 2004.

Love. Angel. Music. Baby.
was also the title of Stefani's first solo record, released in
late 2004. There were rumors that her band's most recent
single—a remake of an '80s alternative hit from Talk Talk,
"It's My Life"—would be their final recording,
but Stefani assured fans that they were just taking a break. "We
were pretty much married to each other for 17 years," she told
journalist Ben Wener for her hometown daily, the
Orange County Register.
"It's healthy for us to take time for ourselves.
We've had our cake and eaten it so many times, we can't
believe it."

The album
Love. Angel. Music. Baby.
was an homage to the '80s dance music that Stefani loved as a
teen, and its all-star production team included Andre 3000 of OutKast and
Dr. Dre. "I was not looking to make an art record," she
asserted to
Billboard
writer Michael Paoletta. "I was looking to make a specific record
that would be everyone's guilty pleasure." Its first single,
"What You Waiting For?," was doing well on the charts just
as Stefani was conquering another realm: the big screen. Martin Scorsese
cast her alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in
The Aviator
as Jean Harlow, the Hollywood bombshell who dated aviation pioneer Howard
Hughes.

With the transition to film, and her sideline career as a trendsetting
style icon, Stefani has often been compared to Madonna, whose over-the-top
image also belies a more traditional Italian-American/Roman Catholic
heritage. Like her predecessor, Stefani has made Los Angeles' Los
Feliz neighborhood her home, but also has a place in London and an
Englishman for a husband. And like Madonna, Stefani has also been the
subject of her share of British tabloid stories, especially when London
papers revealed that Rossdale was the father of a teenage
daughter—now a runway model—he never knew he had.

There were rumors that Stefani was devastated by the news, partly because
her own oft-stated desire to become a mother was still unfulfilled. In a
2004 interview with Ali in
Newsweek,
Stefani remembered what Interscope label president Jimmy Iovine had told
a decade earlier, before the success of
Tragic Kingdom.
"'You're gonna be a star in six
years.'" Stefani recalled Iovine as telling her that day.
"I was like, 'Yeah, right. First off, I won't be with
my band then; second, I'll have, like, five kids, and third,
there's just no way.'"

Selected discography

No Doubt

No Doubt,
Interscope, 1992.

Tragic Kingdom,
Trauma/Interscope, 1995.

Return of Saturn,
Interscope, 2000.

Rock Steady,
Interscope, 2001.

Everything in Time
(B-sides, rarities, and remixes), Interscope, 2004.